Comments on: Feminist Writers

By: belledame222

belledame222 — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:39:36 +0000

ugh, did not intend a winkie there.

By: belledame222

belledame222 — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:37:32 +0000

For the record, I’m perfectly aware that the slams on me have to do with my reputation more than my actual quotes here. Although I don’t recall personally encountering either Lara or Otha before. Anyway.

Turning the snark machine off for a moment, then,

>>I mention this not least because the very feminist Jill Filipovic of Feministe is pretty femme and the *very* anti-feminist Mrs. Kim du Toit (married to the aggressive MRA Kim du Toit) is not at all.>>

Yeah. That. And again: Camille Paglia: dead butch. Catherine MacKinnon: fairly successful as these things go. Yeah, image matters to some degree, but again: when it comes to political anti-feminism, it’s what’s INSIDE the books that really sells. Cleavage alone only gets you so far (does anyone even know what Elizabeth Wurtzel is doing these days?); and again, Rush Limbaugh far outsells any of these people…

And, well, there’s this, and then there’s the celeb post and its follow-up, I can’t help noticing, and–as I said more snarkily elsewhere: really not seeing how this is much different from classic…well, bluntly, yeah: sexism. Internalized or otherwise. I mean, I don’t think I’m the only one here to notice that there’s a theme here, not just yours:

And yeah, the heterocentricity of the whole thing irks, figleaf’s sort of correct there: I honestly do not understand why there’s this much emphasis on what is or isn’t attractive to men, period. I mean, if you’re spending all your time thinking about what men think, you’re…still spending all your time thinking about what men think. Seriously, why do you care? Why does it -matter- to a -radical feminist- that Scarlett Johanssen is conventionally sexually attractive, for heaven’s sake? What -exactly- is she threatening? How is it feminist to sneer at a photo of her looking “vacuous” and make it about -her- instead of at least “oo, bad photo there” (because of course, again, if she’s pretty, she can’t possibly have a thought in her head; because it’s just too threatening for a woman to be smart -and- attractive, and this attitude is not at all misogynist…)

And really, do you think no woman ever looks at another woman and instead of envying her, just thinks: wow, she’s beautiful, I -like- looking at her? Sexually or otherwise?

And since when are Aretha Franklin and Billie Holliday -not- sexual, for heaven’s sake? Have you listened to a Billie Holliday record recently? Seen her photos? And I happen to think Aretha is hot as hell. Why is this a zero-sum game, anyway? How is the existence of Beyonce (who I don’t love, and is no Aretha, true enough, but isn’t exactly incapable of singing either) threatening their legacy? I honestly don’t get this. If you want to talk about pop music sucking nowadays, talk about the corporate Blob-ification of the Industry, sure, that’s real and recent enough; but that’s hardly the fault of the women they prefer to keep on the front covers.

And if you really think media was -less- sexist or difficult for women to succeed on their “talent” in the dear dim days before everything was quite so…what’s the trendy term? “pornified?” …really, no. Just: no. I’d -really- be here all night if I were going to go into all the ways that that’s just…No.

By: figleaf

figleaf — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:45:28 +0000

So I’d just accept that the idea’s good — there really is a lot more support for anti-feminists, including antifeminist women — but the execution needs work. When I was a (student) production manager for a college paper the art director would sometimes send an image back five or ten times for refinement. And while it took a little while to get used to that back and forth. But it’s *art* I’d say, but it’s *not illustrating a point* they’d say. Eventually I agreed.

Anyway, since it’s pretty clear from your reaction that you meant to communicate that anti-feminists get a lot of perqs and not that they’re cocktail-sipping blondes with (hand-drawn) bubbles for thoughts you could probably modify the image to show maybe something more evenly matched, an intent head-down woman with an Apple, sure, and signs of more income but books like The Rules (eww, by the way!), The Fountainhead, To Hell With That, and other anti-feminist works.

I mention this not least because the very feminist Jill Filipovic of Feministe is pretty femme and the *very* anti-feminist Mrs. Kim du Toit (married to the aggressive MRA Kim du Toit) is not at all.

—

For the record I think it’s important to recognize the principle of Kierarchy (the systematic domination anywhere by any sort of elite.) The issue is that Belledame is actually further marginalized in the sense that you mainstream “radfems” don’t acknowledge her BDSM-oriented lesbianism. Which, after watching various interactions over the last couple of years, seems to be the trigger for her “trolls.” And in the tradition of all privilege, mainstream “radfem” feminists fail to distinguish *her* bitter resentment of marginalization for from any other kind of opposition, with the result that *she* gets lumped in with Rush Limbaugh. (It’s sort of like if Eleanor Smeale didn’t recognize that Twisty Faster thinks NOW is too *conservative* and so dismissed her and her readers as indistinguishable from Rush Limbaugh’s dittoheads. You’d be angry about that. Belledame seems to be angry when others make the same mistake about her.)

That doesn’t mean her criticism is right or wrong, it just explains why she gets so apoplectic about what she perceives as just more privileged dismissal.

Take care,

figleaf (who’s not sure he counts as feminist but is passionately anti-anti-feminist.)

By: Mary Tracy9

Mary Tracy9 — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:20:16 +0000

I don’t know if she’s “black” black, but she’s clearly not white. That’s why the white woman’s skin has a pink tint.

By: Renegade Evolution

Renegade Evolution — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:16:00 +0000

(for the record, I think you’re a good artist, but I couldn’t tell the feminist writer was black, I just thought she had brown hair.)

By: Dante D'Anthony

Dante D'Anthony — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:13:48 +0000

Feminism is death. What a sick ideology. IWWWWWW.

By: Mary Tracy9

Mary Tracy9 — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:55:29 +0000

See, I don’t even understand this whole “femme” thing. For me, it’s not that one is femme and other is … the opposite of femme, whatever the Hell that is. All I see is one woman who is beautiful and rich, and another who is poor and black. I mean, the black woman is wearing pink socks and has long-ish hair. Their class difference rings far louder than any “femme” – “non-femme” thing. One is sitting at an expensive place having a cocktail, the other has to survive off baked beans. One wears very expensive clothing, the other just wears jeans. One has a fancy laptop, the other a “battered old thing”. It’s not that the black woman is not “femme”. It’s that she a) can’t afford it and b) the cannot be “white” which is always, always associated with femininity (Ain’t I a woman). I personally don’t even believe in “femme” and “anti-femme” (or whatever)

In the end, people’s readings of the cartoon say more about themselves and they say about the cartoon itself.

By: Plain(s)feminist

Plain(s)feminist — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:18:18 +0000

This makes me think a lot about Dianne DiMassa’s Hothead Paisan, which also relies on stereotypes. I have to go back and look at some and see what I think after having this conversation – IIRC, her stereotypes are much-exaggerated and blatantly over-the-top. I think the Guerrilla Girls, in using recognizable works of art, are doing something quite different, too, in the way they use these images. Leanne Franson has used images like the ones in this cartoon to represent feminism and anti-feminism very generally, but she also sometimes has her main (feminist) character, Liliane, dress up in wigs and heels and so on, so one doesn’t get the sense that it is being femme that is the defining issue.

I do think that what is problematic for some folks is less this particular image, and more this particular image in the larger context of a background of many online discussions between feminists of various stripes about heels, shaved legs, short skirts, lipstick, etc., and how they fit or don’t fit into feminism. (I could be wrong about that.)

Like I said, I don’t have any answers, but I do appreciate the discussion, and now I have an excuse to dig through my old comics and think more about this.

By: marytracy9

marytracy9 — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:10:43 +0000

plain(s)feminist does have a point. It is impossible to make comics and/or cartoons without falling into stereotyping. The only alternatives are to create whole characters or to go for stick figures. But when one makes a one time only comic is literally impossible to get one’s message across without resorting to stereotypes. Otherwise people would NOT understand the message. And it’s true of all comics. Rich, powerful, beautiful, politician, poor, all are depicted in a very clear ways.
I, seeing the limitations of this system, tried to make it better by labeling the characters in the comic, so that all the criticism would fall onto their “feminist” or “anti-feminist” nature, and not on whether one has straight hair and the other has curly hair. But please note that this “labelling” mechanism is seen as a very bad move in the comic world. It’s a blatant recognition that one cannot do one’s job properly in the drawing department, and has to rely on unnecessary words.

We could argue whether I should stop trying to use images and comics to convey my feminist points, seeing as how bad stereotypes are. But I personally feel like we would be missing something. The Guerrilla Girls have used images to make their points and I haven’t seen or heard anyone criticising them for using either pictures of naked women OR pictures of famous actresses.

By: pisaquaririse

pisaquaririse — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:39:37 +0000

I think plainsfeminist pinpoints an important issue with the cartoon: “by representing the physical characteristics of an anti-feminist writer and of a feminist writer in the way you did … you did give the impression that anti-feminist writers are femme and feminist writers are not”

But she even admits herself she doesn’t know how to represent such a person.

Which I think addresses an even more important point: how does one draw/represent a woman that does not somehow feed a stereotype? You can always draw the *opposite* of a stereotype but even that’s too reactionary and still dependent upon the stereotype (and means any woman who does not *present* as the opposite of the stereotype is up for criticism). That one cannot do this is such a crucial point (appropriation x infinity) and probably a more interesting discussion than “how many ways can I tell Mary Tracy how to do her drawings”–which she has has taken and addressed *graciously* might I add.

As for discussions surrounding belledame222 and how she has been treated–the insults given to her certainly do not help any particular divisions and do not fairly critique how she has acted in *this* thread. However, no one here is so naive as to believe those comments were made about this specific instance right? Those comments instead (I’d bet big$) come from a history of interactions, or posts/threads, full of mis-characterizations, and mockings of many a radical feminist. *Many* times when said radical feminists have no interest in such instigations or in posts indulging a known disagreement. At some point it is obvious that all the linking to and taking words out of context and posts dedicated to, again, indulging duh-disagreements will get *old*.

Radical feminists will get fed up. As well they should.

Friends/supporters of BD can and have every right to question the charges and call them out for their harsh tone but let’s not be so one-sided.
Come on.
Hypocritical.